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Dear All,

You might have noticed ... that the presentation of the September Newsletter had a little bit changed ... ??!!
... was it a little bit more ... let say, interactive ?

Please tick the only one correct answer below  ;-)

O    Yes
O    No
O    None of the above !

Summary

Foreword
1. Demo CD-Rom
2. Demo Internet
3. Umbrella Association
4. Dissemination 2000 : Reports
5. METACHEM
6. Image of Chemistry
7. ECTN : Academic time
8. What's coming next !

Foreword

We have a very nice tool for the evaluation of knowledge in chemistry,
We have a very accurate approach with the "Core" definition,

If we do not want to feed another project archive (that everybody will forgot), and,
If we do not want to loose our investment (think about the 6 years - at least - we spent all together, to write the Core, to edit Questions, to setup Libraries, to build up the Windows demo test, to run Translations, to run Pre-testing, ...),

Even if Europe is a big market place itself, Europe is not always well recognized (and also not even known) by the American market ; Australia is too far away, but they are now competitor ... and if we are not present, we will definitely missed the spot and US products will take the lead !

So, we need to move !

P.Mimero

Summary

1. Demo CD-Rom

European Chemistry Test 2000 / current version : 3.5.1 eu

New version 4.0 :

Thanks to Bengt J. who provide the Swedish translation of the Analytical and Inorganic tests.

By the way, is there anybody from Danemark and Finland ready to provide the translation of the Inorganic test in Danish and Finnish???

Thanks to Mariano F. for his last email pointing out some spanish mistakes.

Updates (#1) required for the next release

This first set of translation represent a minor update but would be very usefull.
The new release of the Main file will incorporate 2 new updates versions of the Main file :
    - Main file for the CDRom
    - Main file for the hard disk version
Please find attached to the email the RTF file document incorporating the requested update for the Main file - the left colomn is th actual text, the 1 or 2 right column represent the new version - the red text underlined the changes.

I would much appreciate, if you could send back the translation as soon as you can, but not after November 20.

A second set of translation will come later on.

Reminder : the updates will be available on the next CD, only if all translations are ready.
 

2. Demo Internet on the Internet !

I tried to preserve as much as possible the original topics in order to avoid too many translations processes, but we need to incorporate some updates, as most of the information contained in this version is now 2 years old and not always adapted for the Internet interface.
 

3. European "Umbrella" Association

Chemistry presentation webpages on the EASK website (http://www.eask.be).

Correction of the Italian version was requested - will be incorporated.

4. Dissemination Programme 2000 - Reports

P. Mimero presented a poster on the Evaluation of the Core Chemistry and a live demo.
- ACS still keep an eye on our product;
- NSF (National Science Foundation) was really interested, they enjoyed taking the test, and will carefully look up the future extension with feedbacks !
- Australia (University of Sydney) is developping a similar product named "ChemMark" including a Drawing tools (subcontracted licence to ChemFinder), this is a full Internet marking test with feedbacks available as a self-assessment tool. They do not have exactly the same approach as we had but still very interesting, we could see them as a serious competitor on the market place (they are moving to a commercial approach).
- Also the main contact was the representative of FIZ-Chemie as they have a wide German project focusing on the creation of a collection of smaller learning unit per item and domain (having the same "core" approach as us), in a way a teacher could pick-up some module to build his own lesson and present it in the way he want to (valid and accurate content but free teaching environment) ; this project is funded by the German Ministery of Education and represent a collaboration of German entities (Universities), and they now extend the  concept with the cooperation of the French association of the Grande Ecole entitled "Gay Lussac Network". This is a commercial and complementary tool to our product !

P.Mimero

Summary

5. METACHEM : METALABORATORIES FOR COMPLEX CHEMICAL APPLICATIONS

Innovative tools for scientific collaborations

A European initiative that has been succesful in gathering research laboratories around common projects is COST (Collaboration in Science and Technology). This initiative follows a bottom up approach and allows people to group together and collaborate on  common research projects. Particular areas in which projects can be developed (Actions) are proposed to the COST technical committee by interested scientists. Once an Action has been approved by the COST technical committee (for the scientific merit) and approved by at least five national officers (for national and European relevance), it is assigned a financial budget.

COST has been particularly succesful among chemists and, in the past, 22 Actions have been approved and launched [1]
by COST in Chemistry. These Actions cover most of the fields of active research in Chemistry and, usually, expire five years after being launched. As a result, there is a continuous evolution of the focus of the various Actions. A feature of the COST initiative is that it does not provide direct money for research (although METACHEM could induce EU special investments on infrastructures). A project proposal needs to state the amount of money participating laboratories will invest in it. The added value of COST is that it provides a quality label for active European collaborations together with  some money to support  meetings, workshops and short term mobility of young people. In some countries the COST label is also of great help in attracting public and private funding. COST requires, in return, yearly reports of the activity, mid term and final assessments conducted by external referees during a dedicated workshop.

The dramatic evolution of computing and networking technologies combined with the ever increasing complexity of realistic chemical modeling of materials and processes on an  a priori molecular basis, has prompted the launch of METACHEM (D23) [2] [3]. This new Action is aimed at enhancing the collaboration and the sharing of the know how among chemical laboratories working on a common project by grafting them on a metacomputer system (Metalaboratory). Metalaboratories  will allow the development of the different aspects of the modeling of complex chemical problems without having to convey in a single location  all the necessary laboratories, programs and pieces of hardware (after all, this would be extremely difficult to do because of  scientific, economical and organisational reasons). This makes necessary the participation to the Metalaboratory of Laboratories competent in disciplines different from Chemistry. A first necessary competence is the ability to manage a metacomputer system that could be provided either by a particularly skilled Chemical Laboratory or by a Computer Science Laboratory or a European Large Scale Facility. Other necessary competences may be provided by those disciplines for which the understanding of chemical structures and processes are a key step for scientific and applicative development (such as biology, medicine, materials, food science, agriculture, environment, etc.).

Metacomputers are computing platforms made of clusters of geographically distributed (usually heterogeneous) computers connected on a network through a coordination software that makes them act as single virtual parallel machines [4]. These systems distribute the applications on the machines of the cluster and are addressed to computer applications whose complexity and computing time demand is too high for being handled efficiently by  a single computer architecture. Metacomputing is a fast growing area in high performance computing because it is the most cost effective approach to intensive computations. A key advantage of  metacomputing platforms is the flexibility of the operating environment in which either codes or data can be shipped for a total or partial coordinated execution on  the (available) machines of the system most suited for the job (until they are not called back by the owners. This makes the metacomputer not only a scalable computing platform that offers to the partners of a Metalaboratory extra resources and collaborative support, but also a computing environment optimizing the distribution of parts of  complex applications to the most suited available machines (that can be, for example, specialized on a specific aspect of the application).

The Metalaboratory project focuses on a limited  and protected environments made by a group of Laboratories that agree to work on a common project. (Without excluding a more loosely coupled interaction with more global initiatives). As a result, the Metacomputer to assemble and the problem solving environment (PSE) [5] to design to properly manage the Metalaboratory, are less complex. The aim of
these PSEs is mainly to free the researcher from the need to know about the management of the computing resources and offer a decision framework specific for the project being developed. This type of  PSEs act, in general, both at low and high level constituting
a layer of software (middleware) that interfaces hardware and basic software (back-end) to specific user applications (top-end) using for each them an appropriate language.

New teaching methodologies in chemistry based on computer support need the intervention of several experts and can take advantage from a metacomputer based approach. The preparation of multimedia, the design of alternative learning strategies, the tracing back of the percourse of the individual student, the use of the feedback from drills and practice are all aspects of teaching for which research and development of the appropriate tools are needed. This is relevant not only to University teaching but also to professional training and to basic alfabetization in chemistry of the general public.

REFERENCES

[1] Activity report 1995-96 of COST Chemistry Actions, Luxenbourg, 1998 ISBN 92-828-2603-1; Activity report 1997-98 of COST  Chemistry Actions, Luxenbourg, 1999, ISBN 92-828-7416-8.

[2] A. Lagana`,  METACHEM: Metalaboratories for cooperative innovative computational chemical applications, METACHEM workshop, Brussels, November (1999) (see also D23: Technical annex); SUSTECH 11 Event: Innovation through Collaboration, COST-Metachem/CAPRI Industrial use of IT and potential applications of supercomputers, La Hulpe, Belgium, November, 2000.

[3]  H. Gavaghan,   Nature, 2000,  406, 811.

[4] I. Foster, C. Kesselman Eds., The Grid: Blueprint for a  New Computing Infrastructure, Morgan Kaufmann Publ., San Francisco, 1999,

[5] S. Gallopoulos,  E. Houstis, and J. Rice, Computer as Thinker/Doer: Problem-Solving Environments for Computational Science, IEEE Computational Science and Engineering, Summer (1994).

6. Image of Chemistry

7. ECTN : Academic time ...

Please would all participants complete and return this form as soon as possible. It is very important to justify the universities
contribution to ECTN costs.

8. What's coming next !

- the result of the ECTN2 application ? still ...

- INNO 2000 Conference report -  Helsinki, FI / September 2000 by K. Wähälä

- EUCO-CC3 Report meeting - Budapest, HU / September 2000 by P. Mimero

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